Apr
30
Back from blog burnout.
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It’s been a long hiatus from blogging (all of 2008 so far, as a matter of fact), but sometimes life can reach the point of burnout so that there’s no choice but to chill out and focus efforts and attention on other things. It hasn’t been all about blogging either; it’s all of the website work in general, although some things get attention out of sheer necessity.
Not that everything stopped altogether, but discretionary time and attention has been more focused on what’s not the usual and with personal interests: delving into some books and study for new or updated skills and techniques, and keeping up with latest search developments. Boy, haved there been plenty of those, especially the MSN/Yahoo drama, which has seemed like more of a TV miniseries on corporate high drama than real life.
And news stories - lots of those have been literally riveting, especially the ones involving women in roles and life situations unfamiliar to the great majority of us in the world. First that unfortunate Pickton trial in Canada, after years of devastation to so many, a few public and political scandals, and now there’s that FLDS legal mess in Texas. And lots more in between, but it’s an eye opener to take a prolonged glimpse into people’s lives and lifestyles that are so alien to us who live in the “normal” world.
Anyway, it’s about time to get back into balance and get back on track with what’s been neglected - and get rolling on some new projects, but not in the same old, same old way.
Nov
24
Catching up after a blogging and writing hiatus
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It’s been the longest hiatus from blogging I’ve taken, but it’s time to jump back in and catch up. It’s been an interesting time, taking the real first vacation I’ve had in years and even staying off line for most of that time.
It hasn’t been idle time, just different. I’ve been going through to refresh and fix up the CSS on sites one by one, and started to dig into mod_rewrite and PHP, even ordering a print book on each from Amazon, which turned out to be written by a couple of the best authors of technical books I’ve ever read. I don’t have ambitions of becoming any kind of expert on either, but will definitely share little tips I learn and use with others on my Webmaster Woman site, which I’ve just started to remodel the CSS on and get ready to add more content.
Right in the middle of holiday shopping season doesn’t seem like the best time to take a break from “sales” sites, but when burn-out hits what choice is there but to shift gears for a while? Not doing anything web-related is unthinkable, so freshening up a site or two or three with some fresh content seem like a very palatable option when a change of pace is needed. For a while, anyway.
One of the things on the to-do list is a remake of this site, so the files have been backed up, themes are being looked at for a new look instead of this drab, plain vanilla (unless I get brave enough do one from scratch or dig into seriously modifying this one), it’ll be updated to the latest build, and have a major navigation change.
May
13
It’s unbelievable how much material can be written and accumulated over the years! Most needs to be slightly rewritten, or edited at least a little bit, if only for for organization and navigation purposes. Not to mention filling in details that were forgotten when written on the fly. But like a friend has nagged me many times, no one can read things when they’re just on my hard drive, so they don’t do anyone any good.
The SEO section got a little padding out with a few pages, and the navigation is getting there.
May
10
New Site Finally Going Live
Filed Under Marcia Personal | 2 Comments
I’ve long wanted to do a site with tutorials and also a site about women’s issues, and took a domain name long ago that I figured covered both. It’s been sitting unused for ages, even though it’s been on hosting, and so is a TON of stuff on my hard drive that just needs to be dug out, sorted out, proofread, possibly edited some, and uploaded.
I spent last summer checking out various CMS scripts but never came to a decision. It’s taken long enough, so Webmaster Woman will be going live with a soft launch just as soon as I decide on the navigation and directory naming structure and what file extension to use for the pages.